


Surprise, Surprise

by wanderlustlover



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Farscape, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:43:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes morning-after stories beat the hell out of night-of stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surprise, Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge Recipient: Zorb

Aeryn became aware first of her mouth and throat, the former dry and the latter filled with a cloying taste. Then she noted that her head felt as though Moiya had landed right on top of it. Wrinkling her face in disgust, she curled up closer to the sleeping form next to hers, realizing soreness across her body, as she did. Rubbing her nose against the blanket, considering whether walking would be cumbersome a few days, she said, "Anymore crazy nights like that and I'm going to have to kill you."

There came the first sounds of life from the curl of blankets, a half groan, half mutter of annoyance, as Aeryn pushed herself up, gave a precursory glance at the strange sleeping quarters, and began to tug at the blanket.

"And if you persist in taking all the covers, John," she started coolly, taking a fist full of blanket and yanking it forcefully from the sleeping figure, but her slight smile vanished completely as the blankets finally gave way with a shriek from the naked figure beneath as they were revealed. Her sense of the space around her became suddenly much more important as did the realization that her weapon was not on her. So her words were terse, "You're not John."

"What? Who--" The dark skinned woman bolted up suddenly from the bed. Brown shoulder length hair tousled and knotted, eyes all wide and dark, flashing as though ready for a fight. And as suddenly as she'd come up, she was shifting, tearing the blankets back toward her body, face flushing with embarrassment, which seemed only to make her even more enraged. She barked, "Where are my clothes?"

Aeryn looked from the younger woman warily to around the room, eyes touching on the clothes piles on the floor but scanning for cameras and possible weapons, before she looked back while gesturing toward the floor. Her reply was cool, but her mind was going around all the possibilities of how she ended up in bed with the sparky but very fit woman, while trying not to shudder against the light of the room. "Looks like more than a few people lost their clothes there."

"More than? Are my?" The woman's sentences seemed each to stop at just starting, as she continued to tug at the blanket harder. Her brows knitted downward revealing to the light of day ridges and folds in her forehead that came down her nose. "Would you mind?"

Perhaps her measure of decency wasn't the same as this woman's, seeing as she was presently only covered by the blanket from her waist down and she was making no move to cover herself, but the idea of suddenly being bare on the bed caused her some annoyance herself; even if bare in her mind really only touched on her missing weapon not her state of missing clothing.

Holding her section of the blanket in her hands still, Aeryn raised an eyebrow delicately. "You've got to be kidding, right?"

B'Ellanna stared angrily at the naked woman on the other side of the bed, thinking only at the moment that something had gone horridly wrong that she wasn't quite sure how she'd explain to Tom. The hard toned woman with the almost black eyes, regarding her with that blank, nonchalant, expression was truly starting to boil her blood.

"I-" She narrowed her eyes at the woman, frowning.

"Am-" She dug her nails deeper into the soft cloth.

"Most-" She shifted back so as to pull with her back.

"Certainly-" She moved slightly again to use her legs as leverage.

"Not." She pulled the blanket suddenly.

And only then realized her mistake. Because the moment she lunged back with the blanket the woman on the bed just let go of it, her thin brows furrowed and lips pursed as though she were staring at a child, and her expression not seeming to shift even when her pale figure was completely revealed. Not that B'Ellanna saw much more than that as she fell back from the bed on to a lumpy mess, the world spinning before her eyes as she realized she was probably still half drunk.

"Do you mind?" The floor suddenly shifted under her, and she slammed the ground a second time, much harder though, but she barely had time to register that as another head and face, squinting at her, emerged from the hazardous pile -or was that now body?- around her. "Some of us *are* trying to sleep here. Or at least we were before the bumpy landing."

A slight and smothered gasp came from the woman behind her, which seemed to draw the newest person's attention, but B'Ellanna was still staring at the woman emerging from the clothes, and what looked like another blanket, in shock. Maybe even mortification. Because now there was another woman in the room; this time with short cropped blonde hair, sporting at least one nasty bruise on her cheek.

B'Ellanna's cheeks were beginning to burn and she was having second thoughts about whether she even wanted to know what was going on here, especially since the room wasn't staying very still before her eyes. It seemed to be moving in waves even as she focused on the new person; "What? Who are you?"

The woman regarded her solemnly for a moment, her bright eyes sparkling with amusement before she began to speak while twisting and reaching for something on the bed table behind them. "Kara. We met last night. Remember?" She was back from reaching for a silver contraption from the table and was picking into it as she waved one hand absently. "In case you're still entirely farbotzed, your name is B'Ellanna and hers is Aeryn. Either of you got a light?"

"I think," the first woman - apparently known as Aeryn- started, gathering everyone's attention. She had apparently now found both a pair of black underwear and a matching stretch shirt. Though she was looking up, her hands were still full of clothes and she appeared to be looking for more still, though her eyes were unfocused as though she was stuck in thought now. "I remember something about dancing on a bar top. That didn't really happen, did it?"

She regarded the woman down a long unlit cigar now hanging from her lips. Then Kara laughed half-smiling, "Yeah, that was still early on in the night, too."

"Why should we believe you? Is there a reason that you seem to be the only one who really remembers what happened last night?" B'Ellanna inquired pointedly, ignoring the mutters of 'frelling' and something like 'Rigal' from Aeryn, her mouth curved hard, though not nearly as hard as the grip her hands had on the blanket wrapped around her. Her knuckles now fiercely white, even though what she really felt was exceedingly confused and guilty for snapping.

Kara wasn't sure what was more amusing really. That she'd actually agreed to wait till morning to have her cigar and there was still no light or that the firecracker from last night looked even more attractive enraged by her utter confusion. Pushing up and backwards Kara went that direction until she was leaning against a wall. Reaching out with her toes she retrieved the sports bra she always wore under her clothes and leisurely stretched, her lips curling as B'Ellanna scowled.

Looking up as she shrugged the bra over her head, pulling it down her shoulders, she said smartly, "Because the both of you were pretty dunk last night."

"I don't remember any of that. I remember coming to a large gathering." The Klingon asked her, lips starting to snarl, though her slow movements protested what she didn't say-- that she was probably still drunk or heavily hung over. "So what? You got us drunk and took advantage of us?"

"Right," muttered Aeryn sarcastically from the other side, where she was now pulling up pants and fastening them, standing in the middle of a clear spot in the room that her struggle with the mounds of discarded clothes seemed to have cleared away.

She was still a beautiful whipcord in the day, Kara noted. Moving just too gracefully and calmly, not like a tree in summer, but like a weapon being raised to be fired. Perfectly trained. Perfectly steady. Perfectly still.

"We're upstairs from where the party was. Closet room of sorts," Kara commented turned her gaze to the other, unable to contain her mirth still even with her lips straight. "And for the record I probably drank two or three times what either of you had. I'm just better at taking it than either of you or Princess."

"Did you just call me Princess?" Aeryn asked defensively.

"Well, you would be the calmer of the two," Kara stated, smirking as she brushed at a barrage of bruising that was on her shoulder. It wasn't something that could have been done with a weapon. Unless you really considered a hand or a set of teeth a weapon. She'd probably have the bruises for a week, maybe longer.

"You're not saying- No. No." B'Ellanna said, throwing her hands up and then slamming them down when she realized that putting them up made the blanket almost fall. She looked to Aeryn suddenly, as though perhaps looking for the solace or understanding Kara just wasn't giving, and she added more defensively, "I have a husband."

"I've got a son. And a husband-" Aeryn started, her voice weary, almost wincing at whatever reaction B'Ellanna's face gave her that Kara couldn't see, before she shrugged and contained to thrift through things. "-who will never let me live this down. Can anyone see my gun?"

"You're worried about your gun? We all just-" B'Ellanna turned on her in a fury again, and Kara smiled, welcoming it. Partially it reminded her of her parents or her teachers when she'd done something rebellious, but on the other hand, this was just becoming a better and better. "And do you have a husband and family, too?"

Kara started laughing hard at that though, the cigar falling from her lips. She was haphazardly trying to catch it as she replied, "Frack all of that."

"Once again. Anyone? Where's my gun?" Aeryn asked, putting a hand at her hip and starting to glare in the direction of temper tantrum woman and the reckless, wanton one. Looking at B'Ellanna she rolled her eyes at the growl of being over ridden and yelled, "Yes, there was probably sex. Yes, you'll have to explain it someone. Yes, we all understand your dignity is all deconstructed. Frell woman, you'd think someone beat you or something nearly as terrible. You did it yourself. You got too drunk and had sex with two women."

B'Ellanna's face went ash and red in alternating flushes, though it was only accented even more sharply by the wide smile of approval that came from Kara's tanned and bruised face - a bar brawl, from the night she could barely remember, but bore a bruise for on her thigh from, too. She opened her mouth to respond but Aeryn went on. "Oh, stop standing there looking all wounded and defensive. Find your clothes and go wherever it is you have to go already. I. Want. My. Gun."

Kara, tapping her cigar on her now raised knees, laughed and pointed toward the door, only half watching as B'Ellanna fumed off into clothing piles and starting flinging things every which way. "It's under the table where the coats are. All of them are. They got dropped first so that they didn't end up going off. I think it was around the time when all coherent thought went into its last rational use."

Aeryn nodded and started going for it. There was almost an audible sound of relief and B'Ellanna thought she might have been seeing things when she glanced up from finding her shirt to see Aeryn holding her gun so tenderly it might be a child, but being quickly and roughly shoved it into her hip holster. Pulling the shirt over her head, B'Ellanna asked, "Where are the two of you off to?"

"Gallactica," Kara commented, moving some of the clothing piles with her foot, partially looking for her clothes and mostly just watching the scene.

"Moiya." Aeryn responded, standing hand on the door, and giving a shrug, she added. "I should be going, too, before John and Dargo set this place on fire thinking someone knocked me out and dragged me away."

B'Ellanna nodded just barely at her, whilst Kara saluted her with the cigar in her fingers and a smirk on her mouth. After the door swung closed again, she looked across the room at the Klingon woman who was making rapid movements to finish dressing and vanish herself. "So where will you go?"

"Voyager, the ship I serve on," she replied, in a much softer tone than she'd used since waking up, more like the calm after the storm. Her eyes were dark, but they had this slight hollowness to them. "It should be in orbit."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Kara suddenly reassured her, after watching her search for the rest of her uniform, dress and then to retrieve her weapon as well in perfect silence between them. Regarding her look of immense doubt, Kara affected the serious, straight forward look of true feeling any soldier could make on demand just this side of being trained and finessed to perfection by training others.

"It was a raucous party last night down there. You got naked during the bar top dancing and I brought you both here before anyone could cart you off." Kara rubbed her shoulder slightly. "You just fought back a little more than she did."

B'Ellanna face tore between a flood of emotions, and she looked like she wanted to say something, and though she started twice she stopped each time before the words formed and came out. Watching her flounder Kara considered taking back her words, even if that might be crueler, because she'd learned in the last few months what half truths and hidden lies could bring to people.

Edging toward the door, looking a strange mixture of slightly doubtful and largely relieved, she finally managed. "I should probably go, too. I'd say it was nice to meet you-but, well, this has been extremely weird."

"Sure," Kara said, as she tipped her head back watching the girl go, before she started searching through the clothes for her shirt. If she remembered right it had been lost somewhere about here during the heated exchange on the bed last night. She rubbed at her hip absently and then looked down, noting wryly, a semi-circle of small bruises perfectly mouth shaped, and chuckled considering the idea that she'd savor the semi-sore reminders of what really happened the next week.

Yanking the shirt out she let herself fall into the clothing pile, finding a strange comfort in the misshapen mass, as she searched the pockets for a lighter. Pulling the cigar out from behind her ear she smiled, a slow, languid smile, like a cat basking in sunlight. Lighting the cigar and taking her first puff, she acknowledged that while her body felt more relaxed than it had in a while, she longed already to be flying again.

Nothing beat flying. Nothing.

But a night that would top the poker night tales, well, it came close.


End file.
